December 23, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Pacific High School receives national recognition for locally sourced school lunches

Pacific High freshman Oleana Valley makes lunch for her classmates as AmeriCorps volunteer Abby Long plans future recipes. (KCAW photo/Emily Forman)

The Pacific High School lunch program, which recently received statewide recognition in the 2013 Alaska Farm To School Challenge, now is receiving national attention for its locally sourced school lunches.

The student lunches from the Sitka alternative high school recently were featured in an article in USA Today about what America’s school lunches look like.

They also were featured in a KCAW-Raven Radio story about the recent recognition. The KCAW article touched on how much the students gained by picking locally sourced ingredients from Sitka over box-packaged items to make their food.

December 19, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• UAF Cooperative Extension Service offers Certified Food Protection Manager class by videoconference in Sitka

Friday, Dec. 20, is the registration deadline for a certified food protection manager workshop being taught on Wednesday, Jan. 15, by University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service. This is an all-day statewide class that will be offered live in Fairbanks and Palmer, and by videoconferencing to Sitka and Kotzebue.

A certified food protection manager (CFPM) is responsible for monitoring and managing all food establishment operations to ensure that the facility is operating in compliance with food establishment regulations.

A CFPM is knowledgeable about food safety practices and uses this knowledge to provide consumers with safe food, protect public health and prevent food-borne illnesses. Alaska regulations require food establishments to have at least one CFPM on staff.

This course takes place from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (with a half-hour lunch), and participants will take a computer-based exam at the end of the class. The reason the deadline is two weeks before the class is to guarantee course materials reach all the students in time for the class. The cost is $175, and the course will be taught by Kate Idzorek of Fairbanks and Julie Cascio of Palmer. Students can register here.

The Sitka videoconference for the class will take place in Room 110 at the University of Alaska Southeast Sitka Campus. To learn more, contact the Sitka District Office of the UAF Cooperative Extension Service at 747-9440, or contact Kate Idzorek at 907-474-5391 (toll-free, 1-877-520-5211) or kjidzorek@alaska.edu in Fairbanks.

December 7, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Wilcox family prepares to run across country to raise awareness about Monsanto

A Sitka family is gearing up for a cross-country run in January to raise awareness about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food and the dubious practices of agriculture giant Monsanto.

David Wilcox, 15, and his father, Brett, will begin their 3,000-mile from Huntington Beach, Calif., to Cape May, N.J., with stops in St. Louis (home of Monsanto) and Washington, D.C. David and Brett will receive support from mom, Kris, and sister, Olivia. The current Southeast Conference-Class 3A high school cross-country running champion from Sitka High School, David is hoping to become the second-youngest runner to complete a run across the United States (he recently found out there was a younger runner who did a similar run back in 1928). The family hosted March Against Monsanto events in Sitka in May and October as part of an international movement against the company’s practices.

“Running across the USA! Wow! David and I are growing more and more excited to pound pavement, run trails, meet people, and advocate with millions of like-minded Americans for a GMO free USA!” Brett Wilcox said.

Even though the run won’t start until January, the Wilcox family has several activities planned for December to help publicize and raise funds for the project. Brett recently self-published a book, We’re Monsanto: Feeding the World, Lie After Lie, Book One. Brett and the rest of the Wilcox family will be at Old Harbor Books for a book-signing from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 7, and he will give a reading and book-signing at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 15, at Kettleson Memorial Library.

In addition, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14, David will run 100 laps of the Moller Park track as a fundraiser for the trip. People can pledge per lap, or pledge lump sums at this event. Other runners are encouraged to join in the fun by running in Sitka or wherever they are and recording their laps. Also at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 14, the Wilcox family will have a table at the Elvis Monthly Grind at the Sheet’ká Kwáan Naa Kahídi.

“The topic of genetic modification can be heavy and confusing–confusing primarily because Monsanto and other chemical giants don’t want us to know about the problems associated with modern chemical-based agriculture,” Brett Wilcox said. “We’re Monsanto: Feeding the World, Lie After Lie is a fun, fast and creative approach designed to cast light on Monsanto’s products, poisons and lies. I wrote We’re Monsanto to give mainstream Americans the power to say no to Monsanto’s GMOs, say no to agricultural imperialism, and to say no to Monsanto’s lies. Once we understand that Earth’s natural biodiversity and agroecology are the true solutions to feeding a hungry world, we free ourselves from Monsanto’s poison-saturated false promises.”

To learn more about the run, you can read this Dec. 2, 2013, article from the Daily Sitka Sentinel or go to the Wilcox family website, Running The Country. The family also has created a crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo.com, Running for a GMO-Free USA, where it hopes to raise money to help pay for the trip. In addition, Brett moderates a Facebook group, March Against Monsanto SE Alaska, and a group page about the run called, Running The Country.

November 30, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Conservation Society to host annual Wild Foods Potluck on Dec. 8 at Sweetland Hall

Help Sitka celebrate its wonderful bounty of local and wild foods by joining the Sitka Conservation Society for its annual Wild Foods Potluck from 5-7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 8, at Sweetland Hall on the Sheldon Jackson Campus.

This annual event features a variety of wild foods that can be harvested around Sitka, including many varieties of fish, deer, ducks, berries, seaweed, beach greens, and more. This event gives local residents a chance to sample a multitude of wild food dishes for a true taste of Sitka. If you don’t have any wild foods, just garnish your dish with a local plant.

“Bring a dish that features ingredients from the outdoors and meet others interested in subsistence foods and the conservation field,” said the Sitka Conservation Society’s Ray Friedlander, who is helping coordinate the event. “Your dish could win a prize if you enter it into the Best Dish, Best Side, and Best Dessert category.”

This event is non-alcoholic, and it is open to all residents of Sitka, including members and non-members of the Sitka Conservation Society. For more information, contact Ray Friedlander or Mary Wood at the Sitka Conservation Society at 747-7509, or go to http://www.sitkawild.org/.

November 25, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Pacific High School wins recognition in 2013 Alaska Farm to School Challenge

Pacific High School student chefs (from left) Allana Carlos, Walter Borbridge, and Justin Tucker

Pacific High School of Sitka is an Alaska Farm to School Challenge prize-winner after serving a local lunch this October. The meal highlighted coho salmon sourced through the Sitka Conservation Society’s Fish to Schools program along with Sitka-grown produce and biscuits made from Alaska-grown barley flour.

In celebration of National Farm to School Month this October, the Alaska Division of Agriculture presented the 2013 Alaska Farm to School Challenge. The challenge encouraged schools and community members to highlight projects and activities that bring foods produced or grown in Alaska into schools. These projects underlined a broader goal of promoting the benefits of increasing procurement of Alaskan foods for use in schools.

Pacific High School’s cooking class prepared the meal for students, staff and visitors on Oct. 24. The class is part of the alternative high school’s Healthy Lunch, Healthy Lives program, which provides students with the tools and knowledge to incorporate wellness into their everyday lives through culinary arts, nutrition, and gardening education.

For more information on this program or Pacific High School’s efforts to increase sourcing of local products, contact Sarah Ferrency at ferrencys@sitkaschools.org.

November 15, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Food Hub project to focus on a community commercial kitchen and emergency food storage

The Sitka Food Hub project working group from the 2013 Sitka Health Summit now has refined its focus based on a survey of group interests.

The project will continue to focus on community food security through food education and a commercial kitchen facility. A second sub-group is devoted to increasing local capacity to develop a food storage system for emergency preparedness. These groups will meet individually to begin planning. The groups will also re-convene in December to report back to one another and push the project forward. Ultimately the two projects will be combined as the project grows.

The two sub-groups will meet next week — the community kitchen group at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 19, and the food storage group at noon on Wednesday, Nov. 20, both at Harrigan Centennial Hall. The two sub-groups were created to help tighten the focus of the main project and make it easier to improve Sitka’s food security

The shared-use community kitchen will be a place where families and individuals may take classes, rent space to preserve and can their own food, and small-scale local food producers can rent it to create their own value-added food products. The other group will focus on increasing food storage options, since our local hunger groups need more storage in order to expand and Sitka residents expressed community and individual food storage concerns when it came to disaster planning.

The two groups will reconvene for a meeting of the big group at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 18, at Harrigan Centennial Hall. To learn more about the Sitka Food Hub and to get onto the group’s email list, contact Marjorie Hennessy at 747-7509 (days) or marjorie@sitkawild.org.

November 8, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Herring Festival to host benefit dinner on Sunday, Nov. 17

The inaugural Sitka Herring Festival will host a benefit dinner at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 17, at the Sitka Elks Club.

The Sitka Herring Festival will take place in the spring of 2014, when the herring return to Sitka to spawn. The event is sponsored by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska Resource Protection Department.

“The festival is a collaborative event to promote the importance of Pacific herring on the ecosystem and the culture of Sitka and the North Pacific Ocean,” event coordinator Jessica Gill said. “A few events to note are: kids’ herring derby, herring dip, fish printing, an educational unit in the schools, and a community potluck scheduled for April 4th. I am currently working on bringing in a scientist from Oxford to give a talk on herring for the potluck, but that will be dependent of funding.”

To learn more, please contact Jessica Gill at 747-7168 or by email at sitkaherringfestival@gmail.com. In addition to the event’s new website (still under construction), there is a Facebook page.

November 8, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Food Hub project working group to meet on Tuesday, Nov. 12

The working group for the Sitka Food Hub project from the 2013 Sitka Health Summit will meet from 6-7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

This is the third meeting of the group, which formed during the Sitka Health Summit in late September as one of the summit’s two community wellness projects for the upcoming year. While the group’s ultimate mission, vision and goals still are being refined, community members at the Sitka Health Summit said they wanted the Sitka Food Hub to serve multiple functions — to be a place to help feed Sitka’s hungry while also serving as an emergency food supply for the community and also to provide education about how people can build their own personal pantries.

For this meeting we will continue on the work we started in our last meeting, which includes refining our mission, vision and goals so we can move forward with this project.

To learn more about the Sitka Food Hub and to get onto the group’s email list, contact Marjorie Hennessy at 747-7509 (days) or marjorie@sitkawild.org.

November 3, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Community Food Assessment findings to be presented Nov. 14 at inaugural Sitka Food Summit

The Sitka Community Food Assessment work group will present its findings during the inaugural Sitka Food Summit, from 6-9 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 14, at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

A 2012 Sitka Health Summit project, the Sitka Community Food Assessment has examined where Sitka residents get their food, what types they eat, what they grow, what they hunt and fish for, where they shop, what type of access people have to healthy food, and other questions about Sitka’s food supply. The findings of the food assessment will help Sitka improve its food security.

“The Sitka Community Food Assessment work group decided early on that there needed to be an opportunity for Sitka to engage with the food data and shape the writing of the food assessment indicator report,” project coordinator Lisa Sadleir-Hart said. “The inaugural Sitka Food Summit will use a format that was first tested in the late 1990s when the Island Institute was developing Sitka’s initial indicator report. We’ll interact individually with the data, then use a conversation café model to discuss what the data brings up for us as Sitkans. The working group wanted to create a venue that meets the needs of a wide range of citizens.”

The event sponsors include the Sitka Community Food Assessment Work Group from the Sitka Health Summit, Alaskans Own Seafood, the Sitka Food Co-op, Sitka Community Hospital, the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) Community Transformation Grant and Diabetes Prevention programs, the Sitka Local Foods Network, the Southeast Soil and Water Conservation District, and Sitka Tribe of Alaska. There also will be refreshments thanks to Sitka Community Hospital’s Basement Bistro, St Peter’s Fellowship Farm and Sitka Conservation Society staff.

For more information, contact Lisa Sadleir-Hart at 747-5895 or sitkafoodassessment@gmail.com. (Editor’s note: A few photos from the Sitka Food Summit are posted below.)

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October 25, 2013 by Charles Bingham

• Sitka Food Hub project working group to meet on Monday, Oct. 28

The working group for the Sitka Food Hub project from the 2013 Sitka Health Summit will meet from 6-7:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 28, at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

This is the second meeting of the group, which formed during the Sitka Health Summit in late September as one of the summit’s two community wellness projects for the upcoming year. While the group’s ultimate mission, vision and goals still are being refined, community members at the Sitka Health Summit said they wanted the Sitka Food Hub to serve multiple functions — to be a place to help feed Sitka’s hungry while also serving as an emergency food supply for the community and also to provide education about how people can build their own personal pantries.

For this meeting we will be joined Lauren Havens, who has graciously offered to help facilitate the meeting. Topping our agenda will be hearing reports from volunteers who have been researching other food-based or food-related groups in the area , state and around the nation. The group will be discussing a few things, including some pertinent definitions and finally a heavy focus on refining our mission, vision and goals so we can move forward with this exciting project. We also may discuss a project name change to better match definitions used by major food policy groups. We hope we will see you there.

To learn more about the Sitka Food Hub and to get onto the group’s email list, contact Marjorie Hennessy at 747-7509 (days) or marjorie@sitkawild.org.